|
|
Article: A matter of ellipsis: love, strife, and the pressure for specialty in Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on Etna".
- Article from:
- Nineteenth-Century Prose
- Article date:
- December 22, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Nineteenth-Century Prose. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
I
In what has amounted to a definitive article on Matthew Arnold's "Empedocles on Etna," Walter Houghton claims that "No one can read [Empedocles'] existing Fragments, or what is known of his life and times, and imagine that Arnold was trying to recreate the man or his though or his environment" (312). And although Louis Bonnerot, Paull F. Baum and, more recently, R. Peter Burnham have made quiet claims that the actual writings of Empedocles provided Arnold with minor inspirational points, most defer to Houghton's 1958 judgement and generally maintain that "Empedocles on Etna ... has no need for the ancient philosopher's ideas-any Stoic's might have served as ...